Monday, September 24, 2012

The Day the Coffee Died



This morning I awoke to yet another reality call.  It came in the form of a phone call from my Dad.  He sounded upset with the first sound that came from his mouth.  He said the coffee pot was “broken all to hell” and that he wants instant coffee from now on.  I could hear that he basically just had an argument with the coffee maker and it almost won.  In a final act to claim victory he took the machine and smashed it to bits under his foot and threw it in the trash.  To further add injury to his victim he wrapped up the garbage bag and walked down three flights of stairs to the basement and threw the bag in to the dumpster, disposing all evidence that a coffee-crime had been committed.  Upon arriving back home he took all the remaining coffee grounds including the two brand new large containers of coffee, opened them, poured them in to the garbage disposal, and sent it all to a watery grave.

I fought the urge to go a little crazy.  A dear friend had just purchased this coffee maker right after Mom passed away.  Robb and I had purchased two large containers of coffee for him.  So here’s the hard part – remembering the wise words of my second cousin, Jean Clifford (“live in his reality, not yours”), I simply said we’ll take care of it.  I had to fight the urge to say SOMETHING.  I wanted him to realize that none of his actions made sense and then I realize that yes, to him, they made perfectly sound sense.

So here’s the logic path that Alzheimer’s patients follow and you simply cannot and SHOULD not fight it because it is logical.

1.       Coffee pot is not working right
a.      Must be broken
                                                                                                      i.     Throw it out
2.      No coffee maker
a.      coffee grounds not necessary anymore
                                                                                                      i.     Throw them out

I’m upset but there’s nothing I can do about it and all He did was take one logical step after another.  Alzheimer’s does not allow the victim to think through possible outcomes and to problem solve. They no longer have that software.  It’s like asking your computer to open a program with Microsoft Word when you do not have Microsoft Word installed on your computer.  Instead it may open the file as a text file and all formatting will be lost.  It just won’t work because the software is no longer installed.

Today I will go over to Dad’s and we’ll talk about the fact that we have to wait until Thursday, payday, to rectify the coffee issue.  I’ll pray to the heaven’s that the angels guard my tongue and I fight any urge to correct him or instill at least one sense of ‘you were wrong’ in his head.  He’s not wrong.  He’s right…it is his reality, not mine.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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